In the February issue of BRM, I showed a few photos taken last year when I went over to Australia to talk to the British Railway Modellers of Australia convention. After the main event, we enjoyed a couple of days visiting members layouts around Adelaide.
One of the highlights was Tony Phillips model of Nottingham Victoria. This lives in a 40ft by 32ft railway room and is simply awe inspiring when you see it. Reader Keith Dyson from Nottingham e-mailed me to ask if I had any more photos. Wel
I was just editing a feature for the April issue of BRM that mentions 'Rule 1' - namely "It's my railway, so I can run what I like." It made me wonder, if that's Rule 1, what should the other rules be for railway modellers? They don't have to be controversial, but what are your own golden rules? Share your thoughts with us and if we can, we'll condense the responses into a 'Ten Commandments of Railway Modelling' (or more if required!) as a bit of fun.
As an example of something similar in the c
As promised, here's a final round-up of new items announced at the Nuremberg Toyfair that might be of interest to British modellers. It's by no means an exhaustive list of everything announced, but I hope it gives a flavour of the scale and variety of new items coming from the European trade. If there are any items that appeal to you, the following UK suppliers/importers can help:
Contact Gaugemaster for: Noch, Roco, Fleischmann, Maerklin/Trix/Minitrix/LGB, Kato, Herpa, Piko, Wiking and many
This month's BRM marks the coming thirtieth anniversary of the creation of Network SouthEast with an interview with Chris Green. There's some useful reference information in the article too and one of the pieces of the article was to show how easy it would be to give a fairly ordinary station the same sprucing up that the division started thirty years ago. The simple 'how-to' got squeezed just leaving a couple of images as part of the article so I thought it worth adding the rest here.
Befor
As announced here Bachmann Europe have announced they are to produce the L&NWR 0-6-2T Webb coal tank available in approximately 18 months. For the last few years Bachmann have held events for the members of the Bachmann Collectors Club and this year chose the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway on the 30th August. If there isn't enough speculation and wishlisting on RMweb virtually everyone had missed the clues to this one; Bachmann followed their announcements for the 2014/2015 catalogue with
Morning All,
I popped into Rails of Sheffield briefly on Saturday and found that they had pre-production samples of the LMS black/silver 10000 and 10001 on display. Apart from one or two minor decoration alterations that need to be made, they look very good indeed. The finish of the black body and silver bogies is superb, as are the chromed metal details, as can be seen in the photos. No further indications on delivery dates, but expect them to be 3-4 months away once the corrections have been
Just received from Bachmann/Graham Farish are several new items due for release over the next 6-8 weeks. Look out for reviews in January issue of BRM, on sale 11th December.
Bachmann OO Class 150/1 DMU - FGW 150128. This model features a new chassis, better lighting and interiors and superb decoration.
Bachmann 30-325 GWR WW1 Ambulance Train pack with khaki 4-4-0 City of Birmingham and three ambulance coaches
Graham Farish BR blue 'Princess Coronation' 4-6-2 No. 46226 Duche
Chatting to visitors to exhibitions, lack of space for model making seems to be a common problem. Some people assume that to produce anything you'll need a fully equipped workshop full of lathes and pillar drills. Nothing could be further from the truth. My workbench is a pretty small space in the corner of a room and I still churn things out.
My work area is a wooden cutting board around which are the tools and materials I'll be using. I won't pretend to be organised, if you saw me operatin
Bachmann Europe announced their 2014 product range from their headquarters in Barwell, Leicestershire yesterday. Members of the press, traders and model shop owners were invited to partake in what was to be a well organised event with plenty of atmosphere. Not only was it a chance for Bachmann to unveil their model plans, but it was a great opportunity for all those who visited to catch up and talk about all aspects of the hobby.
Luckily, with the unstable weather that we've been witnessing
Nuremberg Toyfair 2015 Report - Part 1
Every year the German city of Nuremberg is host to the world’s largest trade fair for toys, games and hobbies. With 2,700 exhibitors from more than 60 countries displaying around one million products (75,000 of which are new) and 75,000 visitors from 120 countries, it’s a major event by any standards. Over the next couple of days, I'll be reporting back from the fair, looking at trends, new tech and hopefully posting a few photos of interesting kit.
In a
I took down to London town to visit the 3D Printshow in the old Billingsgate fish market the other day and was joined a little later by Phil and we took the chance to see some fascinating developments which may, or may not, filter through to the domain of consumers in the future. It was a great blend of being able to walk away from the show with some products and to see some stuff which definitely isn't in the pocket money bracket as yet.
It was my first chance to have a play with the 3
There wasn't space on the page in the magazine for the Batam Tug plan, so here it is:
The plan isn't perfect as I've had to work using photos and a few known dimensions, but it will give you a start and since all the tugs were hand made, they tended to vary anyway.
The black and white bars should each be 4mm long when you print it out, if they aren't tweak your printer settings until they are.
Feel free to use it for non-commercial use.
Photos of the tug can be found here.
Whilst on a visit to the Ricoh Arena ahead of RMweb Live in September it was all too tempting to stage a shot which combines a couple of elements of the weekend with Phil Parker's pizza layout grafted onto the roulette wheel in Britiain's largest casino which is on the same site.
For those who know Phil he's quite a funghi.
August's issue of BRM includes a free set of building details from Modelrailwaysecenery.com on the DVD or as part of the download. This isn't a complete kit, but windows, doors, air con units and notices that can be used to aid scratchbuilding or modifying a card building. The details are printed on a colour printer, ideally on to matt photographic paper. You can print as many copies as you need too so hang on to the DVD for the future. For my model, I needed some brickpaper so bought a sheet fr
Just arrived from Bachmann is the superb new N gauge Class 55 Deltic from Graham Farish. Supplied for review is 371-286 BR green Class 55 Deltic D9002 'KOYLI' in mid-1960s BR green condition - look out for a full review in the June issue of BRM, on sale May 8th.
Even a quick look will reveal that it's a big step forward from the model it replaces. RRP is £99.95, which when compared to some other recent N gauge diesels looks like excellent value.
Also promised are D9007 Pinza in two-tone green
You wait ages for a visit to Locomotion in Shildon, and then two opportunities come along within a few weeks. After the fun and games of the Rapido APT-E launch last month, it was the turn of Bachmann to reveal its widely expected model of the Ivatt 'Large Atlantic' 4-4-2, based on the NRM's No. 251.
It was a slightly more low key affair, but Bachmann did at least have several samples of the Atlantic on display. Closer inspection revealed that this will be a fine model, based on a huge amount o
Nuremberg Toyfair 2015 – Part 2
Day 1: Several appointments today, but the intervals between allowed me to have a good look around Hall 4A, dedicated to model railways. Immediate impressions (confirmed by others) are that the number of exhibitors is fewer than in previous years and that those attending have, in many cases, opted for smaller stands. The result is that where, a few years ago, model railway companies spilled out into neighbouring halls, the reverse is now true and various unrel
It's often suggested that as soon as you build a kit for a model, someone will bring out a ready to run example almost immediately. This happened to me with the Fowler diesel shunter last year. There I was innocently browsing the NG Trains stand and I spotted a notice bearing the picture of a loco that looked very similar to one in my unfinished kit stash.
The story began over 15 years ago. At my local model railway club, a few of the members decided that while none of us felt up t
On page 87 of the June 2016 issue of BRM, I've built a little diorama recreating a scene from my youth - a J94 marooned in a park as a climbing frame. Space precluded a full step-by-step build on the page, but we've plenty of space on RMweb, so here we go:
The locomotive come sfrom an Airfix kit supplied by the Kitmaster Collectors Club. Apparently this model the fire at Dapol's factory so isn't in the current range. Fortunately, for this project, a part-built kit is perfect and th
This week Steve Cole and I paid a flying visit to the massive Intermodellbau modelling show in the German city of Dortmund. Having promised myself a visit for several years, I knew it was big but nothing could quite prepare us for the sheer scale of the event.
Attendance reaches almost 100,000 over the five days, with exhibits spread across eight exhibition halls and covering model railways (2 halls), radio control aircraft, RC road vehicles, military modelling, live steam, card modelling, stat
Last Saturday, I made the (fairly long) train journey from home village in Lincolnshire to Faversham. The trip was made more interesting due to the engineering works just outside the Cross, which meant my incoming HST was the first into the station that morning, which meant scenes like this:
Despite an empty station with no trains on the main line or suburban sides (even the 'rescue' Class 67 was missing), the concourse was still quite busy:
Anyway, onward to St Pancras to
Whilst on a whistlestop tour of Kent last week Phil and I dropped into RAF Manston Musem which is chocked full with interesting memorabilia and artefacts.
There's a cracking railway-related model in there, even if it looks somewhat tired, depicting one of the main stores building pre-WW2 with a rail siding. Pop 20p in and you can watch a Bachmann C-Class tootle back and forth shunting for a few minutes.
The buildings are quite delightful.
Outside I turned into a rivet-
In the August issue of BRM, Howard builds some etched signals in 7mm scale. Inspired by this, I've tried the economically priced operating colour light signals for 4mm scale models from Train-Tech.
The company produce a range of designs, each supplied in kit form and simple enough for anyone to build who has stuck an Airfix Spitfire together.
The two aspect signal I built costs less than £10 and takes about half an hour to assemble and paint. It's designed for DC control but DCC versions
I must confess that today was the first time I've been to the Ribble Steam railway and it'll be 10 years old next year. I wanted to go and get some reference details from the substantial collection of industrial locos they have both steam and diesel.
Fortuitously there was a midweek operational day featuring the Waggon und Maschinenbau railbus which gave the chance to bring you a run along the length of the railway. It's slightly unusual to see a preserved railway within an urban e
The current beer-themed issue of BRM includes a piece on the National Brewery Centre in Burton-on-Trent. Andy York and I spent a fantastic afternoon with the team behind the museum and I can wholeheartedly recommend it as somewhere well worth a visit.
I took the train to Burton and local(ish) lad Andy picked me up from the station. With a few hours to kill before we were due at the museum, we drove around looking for interesting old buildings to photograph.
The first
